Sunday, September 18, 2016

Demi-sel 2016

I pulled my caddy out from a Saturday morning shopping spree
Where I shaved off precious minutes by using the 
MFC (or "Most full cart") method
An algorithm developed by MIT scientists that
Proves if you are
Intent on getting on the shortest line then you 
Should:
-go to the left
-avoid male cashiers
-seek the fullest cart
Feeling light-headed.

Compliant, aligned and conformed to this scheme
I should have been seemingly satisfied to pay
To be asked to present my card
So that in a flash I could be on my way
Like a bat out of hell except for my
Eye
That fell
Onto a bar of butter, more rectangular than stick-like
Having been scanned with a single "beep"
(post-beeped, post-scanned)
The letters "demi-sel" proudly printed on its side.



Bien sûr this is all happening in
France
Where demi-sel is salted or lightly salted butter

I confess I have skirted this product for years and years
Friends and family have tried to get me to let go and
Ride this senseless aversion head on

My nephew thought he had it when he showed me how in
Minecraft a character jetsons hundreds of bars of butter into




A swimming pool
Thinking that I would have me
Burning in virtual empathy!

Then my doctor told me about the micro
Flora rich fat soluble properties that 
Peppered with a touch of salt
Can lower your adrenaline spikes while
Supporting thyroid and extracellular fluids.

All this I barred out
Crossed out in my mind like the words in
Jean Michel Basquit's paintings
Words that appear to reappear just because 
They have a line through them.



But the main story here is the salted bar of butter
Not the Zika spraying of Naled in the wee hours of Miami
Not the alarming rise of homicides in Chicago
Not the fact that most para-olympic athletes 
Despise the word "inspiration"

I cried out staring at the butter that I ended up paying for (because
Somebody, unbeknownstly chucked it in my cart)
"Demi-sel!"
Yet with my poor pronunciation the cashier understood
"Deux mille seize" (2016)
And the person behind me understood 
"Deux mille seize"
So from all directions I was looked at with stupefaction and a drop of
Displeasure 
As they thought how this displaced shopper wearing
Shorts and shoes with no socks on a cold, rainy day
Could make a striking statement that the salted
"Demi-sel" butter was 
A cru of deux mille seize.


Sunday, September 11, 2016

Why puzzle?

If you were living in the Sumarian city of Uruk

3400 BC


You might have been an artisan or a slave with

The chore to tessellate the floors, the walls, the ceilings

Tiling was what it was all about

-Mosaics were already as popular as trout

Whether it was polygonal semi-iregular

Or just some hyperbolic geometry

It needed to be done.

This act of reproducing patterns came well before

copy and pasting

And whether it was an act of addiction or



A way to find inner peace 

A Spock would say "fascinating" with 

One eyebrow raised.





 A few thousand years later the jigsaw puzzle is invented

A challenging learning device to learn maps, geography and history 

And ever since puzzles have run away!

Today, puzzlephiles abound, spending hours, days on 2, 3 5000 

piece puzzles that need to be assembled, then dissembled.

And if you're a puzzle fiend then

You've got a puzzle language to go:

"I need a top negative green piece with a heavy grain of pasture divided by a horizontal line showing the head of a sheep but only with one eye and a lower positive round but fat round shape."



or,

"this piece that fits into the water around Venice has to have an elongated top with a light green hue with downward jagged movements that are seemingly similar to another 300 pieces that make up the water..."




Fortunately you don't have to be a Galieo, a Marie Curie, a Decartes or a Freud 

To puzzle

And if you dream you are 

Tripping over gondolas, cows or the nose of La Gioconda




Then your life is a wandering puzzle log

Looking to fit from the inside to the outside.